The Rest of The Edsel Affair is the second of two books that tells the story, from a highly publicized beginning to a barely noticed ending, of the Edsel automobile, introduced by Ford Motor Company in 1957. The Edsel was unusual in that it introduced a vertical front design with wide, horizontal tail lights. The engineers designed brakes that could be tightened by reversing the car while pumping the brake pedal (still a feature of cars today) and shifting the transmission by pushing buttons on the steering wheel. C Gayle Warnock, the Division's Public Relations Director and responsible for the car's public introduction, told the first part of this interesting story in The Edsel Affair published in 1980. Now, he returns with the rest of the story, beginning with why and when the car's abolishment was first recommended to the Company's Executive Committee, and who made the suggestion. The author then traces the beginning and the rapid growth of the three Edsel Clubs, the popularity of the car as a "collectible" and the car's Golden Anniversary party in Dearborn, MI in 2007. The Rest of The Edsel Affair is entertaining and reads like a personal letter from home. Even if you don't have an Edsel, or ever heard of it, you will enjoy the surprising details and enduring stories in this historical tale.

Much has been written in the West on the history of the Soviet space program but few Westerners have read direct first-hand accounts of the men and women who were behind the many Russian accomplishments in exploring space. The memoir of Academician Boris Chertok, translated from the original Russian, fills that gap. In Volume 1 of "Rockets and People," Chertok described his early life as an aeronautical engineer and his adventures as a member of the Soviet team that searched postwar, occupied Germany for the remnants of the Nazi rocket program. In Volume 2, Chertok takes up the story after his return to the Soviet Union in 1946, when Stalin ordered the foundation of the postwar missile program at an old artillery factory northeast of Moscow. Chertok gives an unprecedented view into the early days of the Soviet missile program. With a keen talent for combining technical and human interests, Chertok writes of the origins and creation of the Baykonur Cosmodrome in a remote desert region of Kazakhstan. He devotes a substantial portion of Volume 2 to describing the launch of the first Sputnik satellite and the early lunar and interplanetary probes designed under legendary Chief Designer Sergey Korolev in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He ends with a detailed description of the famous R-16 catastrophe known as the "Nedelin disaster," which killed scores of engineers during preparations for a missile launch in 1960.